Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Abstract

ed from their restrictive, deferential context came to mean something else. In Tocqueville's observation, Americans had a penchant for abstract words because only by using a vocabulary lacking specificity could they communicate radical ideas that destroyed a conventional style. An abstract word, Tocqueville noted, is like a box with a false bottom; you may put in it what ideas you please and take them out again unobserved. The country publicists did not provide the textbook of revolution, so much as a lexicon of revolution, the meaning of which could be grasped only within a persuasion that celebrated the sovereignty of the new political audience. Edwards, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God . .. (174I), in Bushman, ed., Great Awakening, I23. On Edwards's use of language see Harold P. Simonson, Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart (Grand Rapids, Mich., I974), 9i-ii8. 80 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, eds. J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner (New York, i966), 482. See also Robert E. Shalhope, Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography, WAVIQ, XXIX (1972), 72-73. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.112 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 04:37:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms